vortex

SO WHAT:

Operators now have a visualization tool that helps them quickly assess trending behaviors of a spacecraft's health and safety.

OVERVIEW:

Engineers on the ground assess the vehicle’s health and safety via telemetry, or the automated measurements sent from the spacecraft to Earth. Traditional telemetry analysis tools often reflected only instantaneous reports of telemetry, forcing the operator to manually query the data for tending behaviors. This manual process is tedious, and in the event that the spacecraft is in danger, this process can take up valuable time to produce meaningful results. Vortex allows operators to collect, organize, and monitor telemetry channels, as well as visualize the trending telemetry behavior in real time.

MY ROLE:

Led the user experience design effort: designed all front enduser interface functionalities and visual, graphic elementsfor the Vortex product.

Delivered a new product to an operations team: maintained communication with end users to oversee quality assurance and appropriate transition to new software tools. Provided extensive training material.

Engaged in the user community and conducted in situ observations of operator processes: performed +25 hours of in-situ observations of SMAP operators during simulated exercises to understand how users worked with current tools when monitoring SMAP telemetry data activity.

This is the first paper prototype of the EVR Viewer and Histogram distribution for SMAP.Paper Prototypes helped the team understand how operators like to switch from time stamps in their EVR's to their EHA displays.

Produced rapid and light-weight prototypes which helped test new telemetry visualization ideas: rapidly prototyped using low-cost, light weight techniques for simulated experiences of the new interaction with the ThinkDash system to get up-front user input before technical development.